social media

How does Twitter react to the first signs of Christmas

10 years ago
by Lindsay Hemmingham

It’s that time of year again: Starbucks have brought back their festive coffees, shops have started playing Christmas songs, and the John Lewis ‘Bear & Hare’ advert was the most tal

It’s that time of year again: Starbucks have brought back their festive coffees, shops have started playing Christmas songs, and the John Lewis ‘Bear & Hare’ advert was the most talked about thing of the week. The festive season is officially upon us, or at least, according to Twitter it is. A few years ago, you’d have noticed these christmassy customs in real life and that would be it, but nowadays it is somehow necessary for people to inflict their premature Christmas excitement upon their online peers. I don’t care that you’ve bought an egg-nog latte and I certainly don’t want to see a picture of you drinking it, the same goes for Christmas jumper selfies and people inevitably gushing about how they’ve just seen the Coca-Cola advert and “it’s now officially Christmas!!!”

Over the last few weeks, Christmas-themed tweets have slowly but surely crept onto my timeline, with Christmas hash tags trending on and off since the beginning of October, but the turning point came last Wednesday when I saw that the national trends included ‘Christmas’, ‘Xmas’ and ‘#Christmas’ – all on the same day. I’d barely recovered from my Halloween hangover, and people were already planning their Christmas parties!

Now, I’m not against Christmas excitement at all, in fact I actively encourage Christmas cheer and even occasionally annoy people with my child-like excitement in the lead up to the big day. However, I do not appreciate my Twitter feed being taken over by a stream of generic tweets about how “The John Lewis ad is sooo cute, totally nearly cried!! #emosh #christmas” a whole TWO MONTHS before Christmas day. Thank you.

At least wait until Advent (which is the actual, official, religious lead up to Christmas) before constantly bombarding your followers with updates about how excited you are – they haven’t even turned on the Christmas lights in my local high street for goodness sake! Mind you, I shouldn’t forget that all the big brands are the ones who started this tweeting frenzy, using their Twitter accounts to promote their products, taking advertising to whole new scale. Starbucks kicked off by exciting followers with pictures of their famous red Christmas cups on the 20th October,  and more recently, promoting their new Christmas ‘Orange Mocha’ drink. Harrods, Boohoo.com and House of Fraser all joined in the shameless festive endorsement, claiming, on the 1st November that “It’s never too early for a Christmas jumper”… Of course it isn’t, not when you’re the one selling them.

I guess I’ll just hold onto the fact that, amid all the Christmas crazy people, some twitterers were as incredulous as myself, understandably in disbelief that Christmas was trending in mid-October. Yahoo! and Heart FM both expressed their confusion; Toby Antis tweeted:

with Amy Lupold Bair adding,

I know now that I’ve written this article, I’ll feel massively hypocritical if I tweet anything remotely Christmas-related. All I can say is rest-assured, it WILL NOT be before December 1st. Promise.

Couple of Starbucks ones

 

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